Mainframe data types and file formats may be unsuitable for relational databases, data warehousing, and reporting environments on open systems. The converse may also be true if you still process data on, or for, a mainframe. For this reason, you may need to convert variable block or COBOL index files to CSV, or convert text to I-SAM.

Similarly, XML is a popular interchange format, but large XML files have not been practical for manipulation or conversion. LDIF on the other hand, holds large amounts of information but is not a file format that most applications can import or process.

You may need a tool that can convert between file formats and data types. You may also need to manipulate, report from, and protect data in multiple file formats -- possibly at the same time.

Solutions

File Format Conversion Only

IRI NextForm software migrates popular flat-file and legacy index file format, the layout of their records, and the data types within fields. NextForm supports the translation of more than 100 data and 126 file types, including:

The NextForm "Unstructured Data" edition is an upgrade that can search for, and structure data elements into flat files from any number (and combination) of: doc/x, eml, pdf, ppt/x, rtf, txt, xlsx, and xml files.

File Processing and Conversion

The SortCL program in the IRI CoSort package supports the simultaneous transformation (sort, join, aggregate, remap) and inter-change (both conversion and creation) of the same data and file types supported by NextForm. SortCL can also generate detail and summary reports from these file formats, and protect sensitive data at the field level with a variety of data masking functions.

These capabilities are useful for mainframe and database migrations, ETL, SOA, and desktop application imports.

To specify a file format conversion in NextForm or SortCL, just declare the input and output formats in a script or through the IRI Workbench GUI, built on Eclipse. The source spec might contain: